Re: [Wikitech-l] [foundation-optional] A difficult goodbye
tters and for the mid term planning work we have ahead of > us in the remainder of the fiscal year. I know that I am leaving the > Tech team in good hands until a permanent CTO is hired. > > I want to close this difficult message with my heartfelt thanks to all of > you for letting me be part of this incredible movement. Being a Wikimedian > is a great privilege. I wanted you to know that I’m not walking away from > something; I am walking towards something that is very important to me and > the world. I will miss you all. Deeply. Truly. And a lot! > > Victoria > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Foundation Optional" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to foundation-optional+unsubscr...@wikimedia.org. > -- Katherine Maher (she/her) Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation <https://wikimediafoundation.org/> ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Announcing TechCom’s Newest Members
Congratulations Niklas and Dan, and thanks for your continued contributions! On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 12:22 PM, Victoria Coleman wrote: > Adding my congratulations to Niklas and Dan. You will bring a lot of > wisdom, expertise and POVs to the committee. As we transform its mission > and expand its scope, your contributions will be invaluable. > > Welcome! > > Victoria > > > On Jul 18, 2018, at 2:06 PM, Deb Tankersley > wrote: > > > > Congratulations Niklas and Dan — we're happy to have you on the committee > > and we're looking forward to adding your experiences, expertise and > > strengths as well as your unique perspectives during our discussions! :) > > > > Cheers, > > > > Deb > > > > -- > > > > deb tankersley > > > > Program Manager, Engineering > > > > Wikimedia Foundation > > > > > > On Tue, Jul 17, 2018 at 10:06 PM Daniel Kinzler < > daniel.kinz...@wikimedia.de> > > wrote: > > > >> Dear All, > >> > >> back in June the Wikimedia Technical Committee (TechCom) began a > process to > >> recruit two new members to broaden the committee’s area of expertise[1]. > >> After > >> some deliberation, we have now concluded our process and would like to > >> welcome > >> Niklas Laxström and Dan Andreescu to TechCom. Congratulations, we are > >> looking > >> forward to you bringing your expertise to the committee! > >> > >> For those who wonder what this is about: TechCom is the guardian of the > >> integrity, consistency, stability, and performance of all software > >> supporting > >> the Wikimedia projects. It acts as the senior advisor and the > convergence > >> point > >> of all decisions related to technical work that is strategic, > >> cross-cutting, > >> and/or hard to undo. You can find more information in the TechCom > >> Charter[2]. > >> > >> To those who applied or were nominated, but were not selected, I want to > >> say: > >> thank you for offering your time and brain power! It was a difficult > >> decision to > >> make. We evaluated all candidates based on the following criteria: > >> - Activity on RFCs and other Phabricator tickets > >> - Area(s) of expertise > >> - Having a unique engineering perspective > >> - Experience working in and with the Wikimedia movement and community > >> > >> It was a challenge to balance these criteria, especially with candidates > >> who > >> have a lot of experience, but whose expertise and perspective is similar > >> to that > >> of existing members. In such cases, we aimed to improve the diversity > of > >> perspective and knowledge on the committee by picking candidates that > >> would help > >> us cover any blind spots. > >> > >> We plan to do another round of nominations again soon, and hope to have > >> continued interested from others in joining TechCom. > >> > >> Thank you all, > >> > >> [1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2018- > June/090068.html > >> [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Technical_ > Committee/Charter > >> > >> ___ > >> Wikitech-l mailing list > >> Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > > ___ > > Wikitech-l mailing list > > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > > > ___ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > -- Katherine Maher Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation 1 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600 San Francisco, CA 94104 +1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635 +1 (415) 712 4873 kma...@wikimedia.org https://annual.wikimedia.org ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Code of Conduct for Wikimedia technical spaces - Code of Conduct Committee - 2018.II members
I’d like to echo DJs thanks - when I speak with people from other technical communities, it’s a point of pride to be able to share that Wikimedia contributors developed, negotiated, and adopted this CoC. And I’d like to echo Sébastien’s call for further participation - like our various other community committees, your participation is critical to its success. Please do consider a future candidacy! Thank you all! On Sat, Apr 28, 2018 at 4:38 AM Derk-Jan Hartman < d.j.hartman+wmf...@gmail.com> wrote: > Thank you candidates and committee ! > > DJ > > On Fri, Apr 27, 2018 at 6:05 PM, Sébastien Santoro > <dereck...@espace-win.org> wrote: > > Hello all, > > > > The candidate slates has been deemed finalized. > > > > Thanks to the new candidates joining the committee to support > > this important mission, sustaining our code of conduct. > > > > We didn't receive a lot of candidatures this session, so we'd like > > to ask you to think for the next months if you would like to serve > > in the 2019 half I committee, and to be ready in October to join > > the boat. > > > > [ Candidates URL ] > > > > > https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Code_of_Conduct/Committee/Candidates/2018-I > > > > This page will be moved to the members page when the new committee > > will enter in function after a training period for new members. > > > > [ Procedure ] > > > > We haven't received any feedback to techconduct (at) twikimedia.org > > related to one or another candidate. > > > > In addition to the procedure the Code of Conduct provides, we also > > received additional comments at [[mw:Talk:Code of > > Conduct/Committee/Candidates/2018-I]] and consider these comments > > party addressed and partly to solve in the next weeks, and unrelated > > to the current candidates. > > > > -- > > Sébastien Santoro aka Dereckson > > http://www.dereckson.be/ > > > > ___ > > Wikitech-l mailing list > > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > > ___ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l -- Katherine Maher Executive Director Wikimedia Foundation 1 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600 San Francisco, CA 94104 +1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635 +1 (415) 712 4873 kma...@wikimedia.org https://annual.wikimedia.org ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Changes at Wikimedia Foundation
Wes, Thank you for everything. We are going to certainly miss you! For those who have been here a shorter length of time, or don’t know Wes as well, I want to take a moment to recognize his contributions. Wes joined us in April 2015 as the leader of the newly-created Discovery team, entering into a department that had gone through a difficult reorganization. This team was tasked with the knowledge engine project, which was not well understood through the organization. Wes worked tirelessly to unpack the confusion, putting ideas into wikis and slides, providing roadmaps, milestones and timelines. He and the team communicated clearly and consistently about how their work would benefit our readers and communities, building trust and confidence. He encouraged a focus on user needs in his team, and throughout the product organization. Wes looked after his team throughout - I know I wished I could have joined them on their off-site at NASA’s launch center Cape Canaveral, where they went to witness what human discovery looks like at its outer limits. In October 2015, Wes took on leadership of the broader product organization, stepping into the role of VP of Product. He joined us at the c-team, offering steady perspective and strong advocacy for the needs of the department. In November of 2015, his responsibilities grew even greater, taking on the role of interim CTO and leadership for the entire Technology department. Wes took this all in with grace and equanimity, working long hours to ensure that he could be available to those who needed him across these two large and essential teams. Throughout, Wes was entirely clear about his goals and aspirations: he believed in the mission, he would do anything he could to ensure that his team and colleagues had the support they needed to succeed, and he would work with anyone he needed to in order to make that happen. He played a critical role in ensuring our directors in Technology were empowered to lead the search for Victoria, our fantastic new CTO, and he was lead in our partnership with Wikimedia Deutschland in making a long-term commitment to Wikidata. Wes, I am so grateful for your generosity, perseverance, and leadership. You came into the organization at a challenging time, you took on one difficult role after another, and you did it all with good faith and great kindness. You’ve earned the friendship of many across the organization, and we will certainly feel your absence. *Next Steps* When Wes let me know he was going to be leaving us, he also let me know that he felt his departure was an opportunity to consider how we evolve the Product organization for the future. We’ll be having a conversation in the Foundation about how we might do this. At the end, we’ll hope to have a perspective on what is going well and should stay the same, what capacity we need and don’t have, and where things should move around to make more sense (the recent creation of the WMCS team is a great example of how this could work.) In practical terms, we’re not rushing this. Teams are busy with annual planning, and there’s no need for haste. I’m just mentioning it here so it doesn’t surprise anyone. As Wes mentioned, Toby Negrin has generously agreed to take over as interim head of the Product organization beginning on February 28. In this acting role, Toby will oversee the Product department as we work to develop the 2017-2018 annual plan, and bring the efforts of our 2016-17 plan to a close. He will also continue, for the time being, to oversee the Reading and Community Tech teams. He’ll work closely with Anna, Victoria, and myself in consulting with the organization about our future needs. Toby joined the Foundation three and a half years ago as head of the Analytics team. In 2015, he assumed the role of head of Reading and Community Tech and has since led his department with a commitment to the needs our readers and the community. Please join me in thanking Toby for taking on this additional responsibility and important role. Wes, thank you again. We will miss you, so please remember that the wikis are always open, and you are always welcome back! Yours, Katherine On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 9:15 AM, Wes Moran <wmo...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > Hello everyone, > > After a great deal of consideration, I have decided that I need to take a > different path for my life and I am moving on from the Wikimedia > Foundation. I have struggled with this decision as I have great admiration > for the mission and the people here. I have great appreciation for how we > worked together over the past two years, and great pride in what we have > accomplished. The wide range of experiences have been amazing, and it feels > like many more years than just two. > > I am looking at a departure date of Feb 28th. Until that time, I will be > supporting the Product teams through the first draft of Annual Planning. > Katherine Maher, Victoria Coleman
Re: [Wikitech-l] Fwd: [Wikimedia-l] Introducing Victoria Coleman, WMF Chief Technology Officer
Thanks Pine, good catch. My mistake to leave wikitech-l off the original distribution! On Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 11:49 AM, Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com> wrote: > Forwarding. > > Pine > > > -- Forwarded message -- > From: Katherine Maher <kma...@wikimedia.org> > Date: Wed, Nov 2, 2016 at 11:22 AM > Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Introducing Victoria Coleman, WMF Chief Technology > Officer > To: Wikimedia Mailing List <wikimedi...@lists.wikimedia.org>, > wikimediaannounc...@lists.wikimedia.org > Cc: Victoria Coleman <victo...@gocolemans.com> > > > Hi everyone, > > I’m excited today to introduce the Wikimedia Foundation's new Chief > Technology Officer, Victoria Coleman. Victoria’s first day is November 7, > and she will be based in the Foundation's office in San Francisco. > > Victoria comes to us with more than 20 years of experience in consumer and > enterprise technology. And as you’ll learn quickly when you start getting > to know her, she is deeply passionate about the importance of education, > and how the Wikimedia mission advances education and equity around the > world. > > When we started looking for a CTO for the Foundation, projects, and > communities, we knew we were looking for a unique person - someone with the > experience to lead confidently, and the confidence to embrace open > collaboration in leadership. We were looking for someone with a track > record of success leading strategy and execution for technology platforms > at scale, someone will be an effective mentor and leader for our Technology > department, and a strong partner to Product teams. We needed someone who > would thrive in our culture and be an inclusive collaborator with staff and > community. We agreed that Victoria met these requirements and then some. > > Victoria has deep experience across consumer and enterprise technology > fields and is a longtime advocate for innovation in education and the > public sector. She has seen and done many things in her career, from > mobility platforms to connected devices to cyber security to web services > at scale. She brings operational excellence in strategic long-term > planning, execution, delivery, and running large distributed teams. > > Most recently, Victoria served as Senior Vice President and Chief > Technology Officer for the Connected Home Division of Technicolor, where > she was responsible for innovation strategy, product management, technology > roadmaps, and technical due diligence for acquisitions and partnerships. > Previously, as Senior Vice President of Research and Development at Harman, > she led the core technology platforms of the Infotainment Division > including systems and software, media, tuner, navigation, connectivity, and > advanced driver assist systems. Before this, she served as Vice President, > Emerging Technologies at Nokia, Vice President, Software Engineering of > Hewlett-Packard’s webOS global business unit, and Vice President of > Samsung's Advanced Institute of Technology. > > Victoria also has deep familiarity with open source software development, > having witnessed the rise of the Unix movement first as a student and later > as an instructor. She has been actively involved in the development of the > Linux-based LiMo (renamed Tizen). She passionately believes in the power of > open source and is familiar with how a commitment to open source > strengthens platforms and products at an integral level. > > Victoria received her B.Sc and M.Sc in Electronic Computer Systems and > Computer > Aided Logic Design respectively from the University of Salford, UK and her > Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Manchester, UK. She is the > author of over 60 articles and books (!). She has worked with teams around > the world, including in Belgium, Brazil, China, France, Finland, Germany, > India, Israel, Korea, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. > > One thing that struck many of us throughout our conversations was > Victoria's commitment to volunteering her knowledge and expertise outside > of her daily professional activities, serving on advisory councils in > higher education and the public sector. She is on the advisory Board of the > Santa Clara University Department of Computer Engineering, and she is also > a Senior Advisor to the Director of the University of California > Berkeley’s Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of > Society. She serves as a volunteer advisor on both Lockheed Martin’s > Technology Advisory Group and on the United States Department of Defense’s > Defense Science Board where she offers advice and recommendations on > science, technology, manufacturing, and acquisition processes. > > As a native
Re: [Wikitech-l] [WikimediaMobile] Mobile site is now lazy loading images
It is great to see this in production, congratulations to the team. On Wednesday, August 24, 2016, Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com> wrote: > Whoops, I missed the link. https://www.mediawiki.org/ > wiki/Reading/Web/Projects/Performance/Lazy_loading_images. Thanks for > working on this. > > Pine > > On Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 8:33 PM, Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com > <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','wiki.p...@gmail.com');>> wrote: > >> Good to hear. Does this also mean that pages load faster? >> >> Pine >> >> On Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 2:20 PM, Jon Robson <jrob...@wikimedia.org >> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','jrob...@wikimedia.org');>> wrote: >> >>> FYI after much experimentation, research and testing the mobile site has >>> been lazy loading images [1] since Thursday 18th August. This means if you >>> do not see an image you will not download it. We have taken care to ensure >>> users without JavaScript can still view images and that most users will >>> barely notice the difference. >>> >>> We are currently crunching the data this change has made and we plan to >>> write a blog post to reporting the results. >>> >>> In our experiments on Japanese Wikipedia we saw a drop in image bytes >>> per page view by 54% On the Japanese Japan article bytes shipped to users >>> dropped from 1.443 MB to 142 kB. >>> >>> This is pretty huge since bytes equate to money [3] and we expect this >>> to be significant on wikis where mobile data is more expensive. In a >>> nutshell Wikipedia mobile is cheaper. >>> >>> As I said blog post to follow once we have more information, but please >>> report any bugs you are seeing with the implementation (we have already >>> found a few thanks to our community of editors). >>> >>> ~Jon >>> >>> [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Projects/Performa >>> nce/Lazy_loading_images >>> [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Reading/Web/Lazy_loading_ >>> of_images_on_Japanese_Wikipedia >>> [3] https://whatdoesmysitecost.com/ >>> >>> >>> >>> ___ >>> Mobile-l mailing list >>> mobil...@lists.wikimedia.org >>> <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','mobil...@lists.wikimedia.org');> >>> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mobile-l >>> >>> >> > -- Katherine Maher Wikimedia Foundation 149 New Montgomery Street San Francisco, CA 94105 +1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635 +1 (415) 712 4873 kma...@wikimedia.org ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement
Thanks Tim for clarifying. On Wed, Mar 30, 2016 at 3:39 PM, Tim Starling <tstarl...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > On 31/03/16 02:55, Katherine Maher wrote: > > IIRC, we included clean energy consumption as a factor in > > evaluating in our RFC for our choice of a backup colo a few years back > > Since I strongly support emissions reduction, on my own initiative I > did an analysis of expected CO2 emissions of each of the candidate > facilities during the selection process of the backup colo. That's > presumably what you're referring to. > > < > https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1adt45Msw2o8Ml0s8S0USm9QLkW9ER3xCPkU9d2NJS4Y/edit#gid=0 > > > > My conclusion was that codfw (the winner) was one of the worst > candidates for CO2 emissions. However, the price they were offering > was so much lower than the other candidates that I could not make a > rational case for removing it as an option. You could buy high-quality > offsets for our total emissions for much less than the price difference. > > However, this observation does require us to actually purchase said > offsets, if codfw is to be represented as an ethical choice, and that > was never done. > > codfw would not tell us their PUE, apparently because it was a > near-empty facility and so it would have technically been a very large > number. I thought it would be fair to account for marginal emissions > assuming a projected higher occupancy rate and entered 2.9 for them, > following a publication which gave that figure as an industry average. > It's a new facility, but it's not likely that they achieved an > industry-leading PUE since the climate in Dallas is not suitable for > evaporative cooling or "free" cooling. > > > Ops runs a tight ship, and we're a relatively small footprint in our > colos, > > so we don't necessarily have the ability to drive purchasing decisions > > based on scale alone. > > I think it's stretching the metaphor to call ops a "tight ship". We > could switch off spare servers in codfw for a substantial power > saving, in exchange for a ~10 minute penalty in failover time. But it > would probably cost a week or two of engineer time to set up suitable > automation for failover and periodic updates. > > Or we could have avoided a hot spare colo altogether, with smarter > disaster recovery plans, as I argued at the time. My idea wasn't > popular: Leslie Carr said she would not want to work for an > organisation that adopted the relaxed DR restoration time targets that > I advocated. And of course DR improvements were touted many times as > an effective use of donor funds. > > Certainly you have a point about scale. Server hardware has extremely > rudimentary power management -- for example when I checked a couple of > years ago, none of our servers supported suspend-to-RAM, and idle > power usage hardly differed from power usage at typical load. So the > only option for reducing power usage of temporarily unused servers is > powering off, and powering back on via out-of-band management. WMF > presumably has little influence with motherboard suppliers. But we > could at least include power management and efficiency as > consideratons when we evaluate new hardware purchases. > > > At the time the report came out, we started talking to Lukas about how we > > could improve our efforts at the WMF and across the movement, but we've > had > > limited bandwidth to move this forward in the Foundation (and some > > transitions in our Finance and Operations leadership, who were acting as > > executive sponsors). However, I think it's safe to say that we'd like to > > continue to reduce our environmental impact, and look forward to the > > findings of this effort. > > We could at least offset our datacentre power usage, that would be > cheap and effective. > > -- Tim Starling > > > ___ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > -- Katherine Maher Wikimedia Foundation 149 New Montgomery Street San Francisco, CA 94105 +1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635 +1 (415) 712 4873 kma...@wikimedia.org ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Reducing the environmental impact of the Wikimedia movement
hich sounds nice but doesn't in any way measure energy > > usage or environmental impact. > > > > > > > > > > I would very much like to change that and set up a page called > > > "Environmental > > > impact <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact>" on > Meta. > > I > > > have already discussed the issue with a few people both from the > > Wikimedia > > > Foundation's management and from the Wikimedia community and have > > received > > > positive responses. > > > > > > > Neat! > > > > -- brion > > > > > > > > > > In order to further advance the project, I would like to learn more > about > > > how much energy Wikipedia's servers use. As far as I can tell, these > > > figures are not public, but I believe they could very well be. > > > > > > Also, I am interested to learn how changing a server site's energy > > sources > > > can be carried out on the operations side since the United States > energy > > > sector hasn't been completely deregulated yet. > > > > > > So, thank you very much for any comments! Maybe there also is an even > > > better forum to discuss these questions? > > > > > > Finally, if you would like to support my project, please consider > adding > > > your name to this list > > > < > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact#Show_your_support > > >. > > > Thank you. > > > Kind regards, > > > > > > Lukas Mezger / User:Gnom <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gnom> > > > ___ > > > Wikitech-l mailing list > > > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > > ___ > > Wikitech-l mailing list > > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > > > ___ > Wikitech-l mailing list > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l > -- Katherine Maher Wikimedia Foundation 149 New Montgomery Street San Francisco, CA 94105 +1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635 +1 (415) 712 4873 kma...@wikimedia.org ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] VisualEditor support for table copy-and-paste from Word
On Apr 16, 2015 6:55 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: On 15 April 2015 at 09:38, Trevor Parscal tpars...@wikimedia.org wrote: I'm glad to hear VE had your back. This actually reminds me, there's a feature we never really advertised in VisualEditor where a CSV file can be dragged into the editor and a table is created from its contents. We need a blog post about what VE is like these days. I suspect too many people who tried it at release think it still intrinsically sucks, and need to give it a spin again now, two years later. We're planning one, if not a few! Fabrice and the blog team are thinking about how to best showcase VE on the blog, from user and technical perspectives. (Posts highlighting engineering work are among of the most highly trafficked on the blog). I'd welcome thoughts on what you think we should specifically cover. Give it a try. And thank Ed Sanders for all things tables and Copy/Paste. In particular, listing all the cool stuff you can do with tables. You can take out a column with a click instead of tediously going through each line and trying not to make a mistake!! The VE is the *only* sane way to edit tables. Seriously, it warrants the hype these days. And, three cheers for Ed. Hip hooray! Hip hooray! Hip hooray! - d. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
